Can You Stop the Room Please? I'd Like to Get Off

Whew! I'll be really happy when the holidays are over. It's just so tiring, and I'm not even doing that much. So much angst over things that don't matter in order to have the perfect holiday that doesn't exist. Oh, and my stomach isn't feeling so good. On the bright side, if it feels like this in the morning, it might be enough to keep me home from work. On the not so bright side, it will feel better.

So I've started playing World of Warcraft again.

Now anyone familiar with the world of computer games (not Video games, that's a different genre) will be aware of this title. And many will scratch their heads for a moment and wonder how exactly I could have stopped considering the game was only released a month ago, and they extended the free trial date a few days. This is true. But I never played the game at release. I played the game before release in the stress test and the open beta. Then when it cost money, and Megan said she felt it had been bad for our marriage (it was and is a time sink, but it was worse since I had a very limited time to play) I stopped. And I had almost beaten the cravings, when a friend at our Christmas Party (that deserves capitalization, any time you need a steam cleaner afterwards, it gets proper noun status) gave me a present which looked like a game box, wrapped in an EB bag (a very nice one too) and then told me it was "non-committal". Well, the cravings return and the game becomes almost tangibly needed.

A verbal agreement to agree when play time was appropriate and no plans to extend my play time past my free month later, and I'm in Azeroth. It's fun, and I've hooked up with a friend I played in the open beta with and we are running around similar haunts (though with different characters) havng fun. Unfortunately for you my dear reader, this means fewer updates and more tired me for a month. I'll try and make sure I don't completely neglect you, so as to lose your interest, or your polite pseudo-interest. Meanwhile the Crooked Bird has flown it's coop and you might considering seeing what he has to say.

You Know It's a Party When...

There is a streak of puke running from the couch to the bathroom.

Well, that really isn't the part of the party we like too much. And honestly, I think it's about time to grow out of that kind of partying. Well for me and mine at least. I'm not saying there isn't something to be said for mind modifying quantities of alcohol in this man's party. But I've learned to give my limits much wider boundaries. And also to be fair, the puke producer was not drinking particularly heavily and is a good friend that I have no wish to embarrass. Several of us, older than he currently is, have had much bigger messes to clean up after. Sometimes puke is positively easy to clean up in comparison to issues that have been raised amongst friends.

In that category, I believe this party went swimmingly. No apologies for assinine behaviour or friendships that require mending. Just the rental of a steam cleaner and the liberal application of club soda. I felt bad that I had a committment very shortly after waking up at 2pm and was unable to assist in most of the cleaning up. I can't honestly say I was upset to miss out on the cleaning, but I did feel bad. Fortunately there were those wonderful people that stayed behind to make sure my wife did not have to do all the work on her own.

The party itself, just short of the throwing up, (which fortunately I did not witness, but unfortunately was not there due to my wife suddenly feeling crappy in a headachey/sore throat kind of way) was quite a lot of fun. All kinds of people came from family, long time friends, ex-roommates and family of ex-roommates, co-workers, ex-co-workers (just wanted to do the two hyphen thing), and people my wife knows from work. (Also an aspiring UVA student. Go HOOS!) There was much food to be had. We provided a ham and everyone brought some kind of sweet or appetizer as was doled out by my lovely and organizationally talented wife. I have now scored beer and cider that should last throughout the rest of the holiday season and well into the next year.

Not only that, but I can now torment Jefferson with rumors of photographs of several attractive women posing provacatively for the camera. Not only that, but piles of women surrounding various males present at the time. He's got to be sorry he didn't make it out here...again. One of these days he shall see the photos and realize that he's an idiot and that his life should revolve around making is way out here to spend time with those of us he knows so well through phone calls and IMs, but has never seen in person as they sway through the party evoking the thought of Angel era Cordelia. But at least until I finally get the wedding gift he has promised me for over a year (I didn't really expect one, but he insisted it was coming over a year ago) and has just now finished, I don't think he gets to see any of them. Unless of course I decide to post one of my friend just to show you all what a pimp he is.

Worn Out

It's been a long week, and as much as I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, I am just not getting anything done in that direction tonight. I'm exhausted and need to sleep. I've been working on a job that should have taken me 35 minutes for about 3 hours. And I'm not done. It wasn't hard, still isn't. But I just can't focus. I'll be back tomorrow with photos and a party report (Well maybe not until Sunday morning).

Where the Cookies are Fresh, and the Dinner Reheated

Onward with more party prep. I must confess that at this point 90% of it has not been done by me. But I did make a batch of great Chocolate Chip Cookies tonight. I'd take a picture and post it, but that would just be cruel if you aren't coming over on Saturday. (Jefferson, you are always welcome)

But what with Megan (that's my wife) working today, and myself as well, we had leftovers for dinner. Good leftovers, Megan made a very tasty dinner last night that we consumed the remainder of tonight, but still, it was slightly amusing that the cookies were fresh and the dinner was reheated. (Oh, and I don't make roll cookies...only from scratch)

So I've come to realize that we have no sayings for having to make an agonizing decision between two really good options. There is no "between a soft pillow and a comfy chair", or the even better "wads of cash and life of comfort". No, its "rock and a hard place", "up a creek without a paddle", or the cultured (though I'm not going to spell it correctly, so obviously, not so much in my case) "between Scylla and Charibdis". We have many inventive ways to say life sucks, far fewer to say life is awesome.

I find hicks are slightly better at this, even if their sayings make no sense. "Ate smooth up" being one that I know means very good things, but just makes absolutely no sense in any English Language kind of way. Or "six kinds of awesome," that makes sense, but it's fairly plain and mostly just a slighly clever way of saying "really awesome". I think we need a phrase that explains that I have two great options, but I can only pick one. Unfortunately, we never will, because when that happens, we turn it into a bad thing.

"Oh my God!! Woe is me! I must choose between a party with my summer friends or my lifelong, all-but-two-weeks-of-the-year(when I'm with my summer camp friends) friends. This sucks." I'm sorry, no it doesn't. It has it's negative aspects (mainly if you don't chose your all-but-two-weeks-of-the-year friends), but it's a positive conundruum. It's being stuck between Pecan pie and Pumpkin pie. Or between riches and fame (well, okay both of those have real drawbacks, but the world feels they are both great things to have).

We spend so much of our time focusing on what is negative in our lives, that we begin to believe the entirety of our life is negative. The positive moments seem so fleeting, and the negative seem to drag on into eternity. In reality, it's merely the weight of choosing between negative options that causes us to spend so much time thinking and worrying over them. Positives are light and momentary burdens that feel not like burdens at all. If you remember your childhood, most things that seemed like negatives were easily turned into positives.

Can't go outside to play? That just means you can build a fort with chairs and a tablecloth.

Lose your toy? You pick up a stick and have more fun with your sword/cane/gun/baton than you ever had with that toy.

You get in trouble and are sent to your room? You don't spend your time thinking about what you did, no matter what your parents tell you to do. You spend all your time thinking about how great it will be to be able to leave your room again.

Now sometimes life is really hard, and you HAVE to make those tough choices, but let's spend a little more time thinking about the light at the end instead of how deep the hole we are in happens to be. If you're already on your way out, why look back and keep reminding yourself how tough it was to be there. And if you are on your way in, stop and think before you take your next step. Find a friend and see how to get to that light.

Wow that got all sappy and melodramatic, but it's what I feel right now. And I'm not feeling negative, I'm feeling positive. But it is idealism to think that we can always be stuck between the cash and the fabulous prizes.

Party Time is Coming Soon

So in a few days, it is time for our Annual Christmas Party. Boy is there a lot to do (more since my wife is planning it, so all kinds of things have to be done that don't really have to be done, but she's convinced herself are essential. (ohhh yeah, I'm gonna catch grief from this))

Let me escape from the parentheticals and run down how this is going to play out.

First, she is going to read my this and feel upset and indignant at me. She will convince herself that I just don't know what I'm talking about, and don't really understand all the things that need to be done to get a party ready.

Second, she is going to talk to her mother about it and get confirmation that she is right and that all this stuff needs to be done. As she is her mother's daughter, the things she thinks are vital, are often the things her mother always tagged as being vital. So for this example, I'm going to lose the "appeal to a higher authority"

Third, she will confront me and run down her list of things that have to be done before the party. Most of the items will need to get done, but will not involve long periods of time or anguish unless you are her. What she will not do is list all the innane and unimportant things that will absorb her entire conscious being at about 12:30 on Friday night when we are laying in bed and I'm mostly asleep. At this point, she will start to tell me "how little she got done today," followed by what she has to do tomorrow and how she has no idea how it's all going to get done. Then she will trail off and I will almost fall asleep again. At which point she will start talking again and this will repeat for the next 25 minutes.

I must take a brief pause to explain this last portion, or I will give you a misleading picture of my wife, and perhaps give her a complex. Neither of which I wish to do. My wife is one of those women who grew up with a mother and sister that liked to recall their entire day to each other. We're talking just to the level above when they swallowed and breathed. Not only that, but they have no trouble telling the same story to three or four people one right after the other. The concept of "no, is too much, will sum up" is so foreign to them that they aren't even sure it is a valid concept.

So if we have not spent much time talking since I've gotten home from work (for whatever reason, maybe I was playing a computer game, or we watched a movie together... doesn't matter what, but we couldn't talk being the outcome) then she just is not biologically capable of just falling to sleep without at least telling me a little bit about how her day went. And a little bit could encompass four stories, including how she dropped the knife twice while buttering her toast. (well okay, it could include almost anything, but that as she can't eat toast, and doesn't really like butter on things). It's a biological imperative, I just kind of wish she would succumb to it slightly before I'm about to pass from consciousness.

Fourth, she will fail to realize that if she assigns me a bunch of these tasks, I can have them finished in a much, much shorter amount of time that she can. The only problem being, that means she isn't the one to do them. And as my wife has a slight case of terminal perfectionism (which comes with a whole boatload of control issues as you might imagine) this can cause a problem. Not only does she not want to give up control because *gasp* other people will be affected. She also cannot accept that the job can be done in that much less time than it would take her. The fact that I can is mostly due to a) not being a perfectionist b) being a realist as to what is necessary and c) I can commit my complete focus to the task at hand, whereas her being female (normally this non-single mindedness is a gift), as well as her illness make this almost impossible for her.

Not only that, but my mother and her mother have both volunteered to help her get ready. We're fine. There are things to do, but none of them are so large as to be insurmountable. The dining room table needs cleaning off. It won't take that long if we move the stuff and sort it later. Even if we don't, most of it just goes back in boxes. Honestly, she's great about not just moving stuff, but actually putting it away, but it's almost a sickness. Sometimes you have to just move things, but she's pretty much unwilling to ever consider the shortcut. I'm too often willing and eager to take it. It works out well to put us together, but on some things she just doesn't even SEE the alternate course as an acceptable option. (ie leaving for a trip. We are 5 hours late leaving and we are going to get there at about 3am at this point. She hasn't emptied the cat's litter box and hasn't vacuumed the main floor (so we can come back to a clean house). The cat's box has to be emptied (I'm just finished loadng the car, I'm not sitting around) because you can't leave them for three days with a dirty litter box. But it's time to cut and run on the vacuuming. My wife? No, she comes in as the car is just finished being loaded and says "Okay, I've just got to vacuum and do the litter box, and we can go." Cooler heads prevailed and the cats were taken care of and our friend actually ended up vacuuming while we were away when she came to check on the cats.)

I love my wife, and I am excited about the upcoming party, but she always makes these things into the world judging us very closely on our performance, and as such, it's alway a huge deal to get ready.

Work is Where the Big Chair Is.

So I was at work until about 9pm tonight. Partially it was a cop out from going to Karate because my co-worker who makes me feel guilty for not going didn't either, and besides, the doctors trip yesterday left me about five hours short on the week. So I worked 11 hours today and started catching up. I also have a lot of work to do. But less than I did yesterday because one of the really high ups cancelled one of my tasks.

It's partially my fault because I've gotten a bit behind on my current task. But partially it's the fact that they keep adding tasks to me at the last minute, and there just isn't time for them. I am also not the only person by far to have a task killed. Quite a few were cut and I was just one of them. So I'm trying really hard to have my current task done by tomorrow and to be on schedule or ahead for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile the comments about my awesome chair have died down. See, years ago, we worked across the street in a different building. Same company, just different building. They realistically decided we didn't really need that building and consolodated us, but that's not really part of the story. There were a couple of young guys working some IR&D tasks (that's pronounced eye-rad and means Internal Research and Development). They were at the point of their project that they were starting to show it to all kinds of high ranking customers, and so they got really nice digs, including fancy chairs.

Apparently they got a bunch of them, and never needed them all. Ever. They even had trouble because they had too many for their space. So the guy in charge told me if I wanted one I could have one. Of course I said yes and he wheeled down a high back executive pseudo-leather chair. Now we don't have bad chairs for the most part. They are actually pretty comfortable and solid. But this chair is very nice and looks really important. So for months, people would walk by and say "Where did you get that chair? Look who's important now" etc. But to this day random people who I swear have seen my chair before, will stop, stare, and comment. And they always ask me where I got it.

I just tap the side of my nose and say, "I've got gnections".

They alway stare at me like I'm crazy.

Cuteness That Should Be Subject to Trafficking Laws

I was looking through the photos Mike took at our place on Saturday while we were working on the tree trimming and I found this one. I cannot believe how cute my cat is.

Being the Other Person in a Room.

In case you thought you were going to escape with just a short post tonight, you are a foolish foolish person. Though even my wife looks at my posts and decides she just isn't going to spend the time to read them.

My dear friend who got me in to blogging, and in no small part lead to my wife starting her own, is giving me a hard time for bugging him about watching Buffy, and also about not posting his reviews in a timely fashion. He gives a passable excuse about a final in some graduate level databases class he's been using as an excuse all semester. But I just think he needs more encouragement from people who aren't me. Go see what he has to say about season 2 so far and bug him to tell us more.

In more subject related news. I just spent the afternoon in what is a quarterly event for my wife and I. We went to her doctor and talked about how things are going. It's highly unusual to spend any significant amount of time in a room with only two other people, who are discussing a topic I am personally very interested in, and not be talking a lot. Oh sure, polite people do this all the time. Non-6'6" people might be used to this as well. But I am not. It's uncommon for me to be somewhere, interested in a subject, and the least frequent speaker. This is good practice for me. Generally I'm that guy, the one who answers the question in class when everyone else is too cool to raise their hand. The one that if a meeting is going to conclude with no question asked, asks the question everyone else wants to ask, but assumes would be rude.

So when I sit in that room and I merely provide alternate perspective or fill in information in a supervisory capacity. It's a change of pace. I think I do okay, though you could definitely ask my wife and see what she thinks when she gets up from her nap. It can be rather fun at times though. It's like a bad sitcom. The doctor will ask a question and my wife will give an answer that is not entirely in keeping with the truth of the matter. It may very well be her perspective on the situation, but in these cases, it is my solemn duty to either shake my head in an exaggerated way or nod it similarly to catch the doctor's attention and convince him that my wife is full of crap.

Apparently this is a common phenomena. That being the case, I feel better committing the sin of disagreeing with my spouse. Wait, that's not a sin, it's disagreeing with my wife. It's perfectly okay for wives to loudly and agressively disagree with their husbands in public, but God forbid a man do the same thing. Untold furies of hell will lash out at the man that makes that mistake. But apparently a doctor's office is a place where this universal constant comes unravelled. I think they must make the room in a Faraday Cage of sorts or something, in any case, the laws of relationship-time do not seem to apply the same way inside that office. And I have experimented, it doesn't matter if the door is closed, cracked, or wide open.

This must be in correllary to the good advice law. Any good advice from me to my wife will be derided and considered foolish or misled. The same advice, if uttered out of the mouth of either set of parents is sensible and wise council. At least I get to think to myself that I told her so. Hmmm, I'm thinking I either have to write another six paragraphs to ensure my wife never reads this entry, or I should just stop now and hope she reads it while groggy and doesn't quite realized that we're out of that protected space that is the doctor's office.

The Warm Glow of a Christmas Tree

This is just a very short entry to show you the picture I took of our tree shortly after all the decorating was completed on Saturday night.



Enjoy, and send me links to pictures of your trees.

A Stern Scientist in Buddy Holly Glasses is Glaring at Me.

I've got this odd compulsion to post something here. I have nothing to say, as my two green ladies peer down on me from the heights.

I strive to be an anonymous someone's daily obsession so I feel I must give them something to daily obsess about. All the while wondering if I don't write too much for my own good. I mean, one look at the acres of text and I think most people will run for the hills. That's where my faithful readers will carry me through to the next entry. It is still unfortunate however that I am two of them.

My wife has decided she wants to be a blog queen, (and anyone who knows her, knows this is within her power) and as such is in the process of breaking her blog-cherry as it were. I find myself woefully unprepared for a head-to-head comparison, so I ask that everyone here spare my feelings and never tell me how much funnier hers is. Please just continue to aid and abet my patheticallity and swear to me that you aren't cheating on me with my wife. It would break my heart to find you were having an affair with her words instead of mine. In this I know I am completely without sense, and as one who is normally quite fond of logic (kinds of which I have heard of and dabbled in, that you have never imagined) (ouch was that grammatically painful) it should be (did you catch that, I'm reverting to the sentence before the parenthesis, well, before the set of parenthesis before this set, God help me I'm about to nest them. I can't help it, I'm a programmer, it comes naturally) (whew...managed to avoid nesting them) against my nature to be so foolish, but alas, I am human, and I am male. This is one of my stupidities.

Did you escape that last paragraph alive? It was a weed out paragraph. Let's get something straight. If you are going to continue to read what I write, you need to be able to deal with paragraphs like the above. In fact recursive and self-referential sentences and even entire novels may spew forth from my finger tips (which lovely caress my 20lb IBM clicky keyboard). If you found the paragraph above muddled and confusion, well you're human, but if you found it oddly compelling even so. Then I really fear for your sanity, but I expect you to keep reading.

For the rest of you, my need for approval requires me to beg you tell me what you like to read and I will make ANOTHER blog dedicated to pandering to your tastes. See, I really am a full service kind of guy.

To Coin a New Word: Patheticality

It's almost like the opposite of Ninjousity. I realize that I crave immediate feedback on these entries. People (I think I have like 3 regular readers, and two of them are me) should be commenting moments after I complete my entries and lavishing me with praise unseen in recorded history.

Well, that's what I feel, but I realized that is pathetic. It's like anything else in life though. I'm running hard at this "daily or more journal type thingy on the web" and yet I know that in a few more weeks, updates will be more like every other day, then weekly and so forth. But for now, since I am running hot, you too should be running hot. You should be constantly refreshing my page checking for updates, getting the RSS feed (which I think my blog provides) and pretty much making my blog the center of your universe. Well why not? It's really important to me right now, isn't the same true for you?

And here we come to the crux of things. How often are we biased so completely by our own personal passion by things that we can't imagine that someone else might not find what we are thinking as interesting as we do? I've become that guy sitting on the Metro talking about patiently waiting to take pictures of that one type of Locomotive that has eluded him for years. How exciting it is to be at the tracks when that train rolls by, and admonishing some fellow train watchers that they are wasting their time not taking pictures.

Train Engines. I can think of more boring subjects, but most of them include complex math or Jane Austen (Ginny and Megan, imagine me sticking my tongue out and giving you a big rasberry right now, complex math is far more interesting). To spend a large portion of ones time stalking a locomotive that has largely the same function as every other locomotive, and looks basically like a brick that has had bits knocked out so that it's not ENTIRELY brick like.

Birdwatching I get, granted I still think it's fairly boring, but some birds are really gorgeous, and there are a vast array of drastically different species. And while I concede that there are almost definitely hundreds if not thousands of brands of locomotives, I contend that they all are boring to look at.

But here I am feeling that every detail of my life that I feel worth sharing, is a detail you will be fascinated by. Not only that, but I'm sure I'm having a typical "new blogger" phase here and this post is nothing you all haven't read before (at least two of us have definitely already read this, or at least already are reading this).

I will now instruct you on how you construct a believable definition in Balderdash.

First - at all costs avoid the "a species of X that is found in country Y" Those are dead giveaways and should never be picked by the decerning player.

Second - When you hear a word, you will always want to assign a part of speech to it. You'll want it to be a noun, or a verb, or an adjective (and often a species of rare fish found only in the waters around equatorial New Guinea). Whatever you want it to be, don't use that part of speech. Chances are everyone else will want to use the same part of speech you are drawn to, and so you'll get a bunch of definitions that have the same feel to them. By shifting parts of speech, your definition will sound different from the rest. Figuring out the right definition is often a matter of identifying the definition that just sounds different.

Third - Your definition should be terse. The supplied definitions are rarely complicated, or even more than a single sentence.

Fourth - Avoid the obvious answers. If your word sounds like another word, avoid even implying that word in your definition. Again, this will serve to set your definition apart from the rest.

Fifth - Try an be careful to use correct grammar. While not immediately obvious, often times an incorrect turn of phrase will jump out to the other players when they are trying to decide between your definition and another.

Sixth - With a word like murrnong, it is almost impossible to avoid thinking of a noun, and an ethnic noun at that. If this is the case, avoid living things. Make it a building or a festival. Even natural landscape features are preferred, and keep your region general, like Asia or Australia or In Western Civilizations.

Seventh - Unless you are going for the pity vote, don't mention "Modern Spy Games" in any of your definitions.

Image craziness

Turns out that the images don't totally fit. And because of the template I chose, I can't really resize the content box, so I figure I'll just add a new post to push the image down far enough that it no longer overlaps the sidebar. Alternately, maybe I can figure out how to move the sidebar to the left side instead, which would keep the images from overlapping it. Anyhow, sorry if the first image is slightly occluded. If I think of anything else to write, or if I decide to blather until you scream for mercy, it should clear up.

Cold and Grey is the New Warm and Blue

So as promised, some friends and I spent some time in Harper's Ferry today. Not Harper's Fairy as Jefferson likes to refer to it. Mike and I had a good time taking photos, and all of us had a fun time walking around. Upon return, Mike, my wife and I hung out, finished stringing lights on the tree and ate guacamole, tadziki sauce and salsa with Tostidos Gold chips and giant pita bread. It was quite enjoyable.

Mike and I of course had to run to the computer and transfer all our pictures there and check them out. Both of us had some good and some bad photos. I am officially in love with his camera however, and will sell small body parts to aquire one if possible. I also need the 1 Gig extreme speed flash card he has so I too can hear my camera shutter open and close rapidly. For a more complete set of photos, go here. But I thought I'd stick a few up here for your enjoyment.



Mike took that photo of the man leading some other re-enactors in the drill for firing their rifled muskets.



Which would be these guys. (also by Mike) Meanwhile, I was wondering around shooting anything BUT the people (not really true, but for the sake of this blog entry, we'll pretend it is)





There were quite a few other things to see, and together we took more than 300 photos, though it's not fair because Mike can push down on his shutter button and take continuous photos. Also, his camera looks macho and cool, whereas mine looks like some puny wanna be camera next to his. I kept insisting that size doesn't matter, but we both knew I had a serious case of Camera Envy. He did let me use his camera later to take pictures around the house when we got back.

There is something indefinably nice about spending time with a friend you haven't seen in awhile that you slip easily into old habits with. I think my friend Ginny spent some time talking about this very fact in one of her entries. It's also a lot of fun when both you and your wife know someone well and both slip into easy conversation with them. It's far better than just one of you doing so, because then there are the uncomfortable moments when you attempt to drag your SO into the conversation kicking and screaming, when it is completely obvious that they are an outsider. Fortunately for me, most of my friends end up liking my wife better than they like me by the end of their first evening hanging out with her (and me).

Seriously. I took her to a crew wedding back this summer, and she immediately fell in with friends of mine I formed deep bonds with through four years of toil, sweat, and triumph. (We subcategorized all defeats as toils, it reads much better) When we left for the night, everyone had to stop me to tell me how awesome my wife is. I know this, and I like to hear it, but seriously, every one of them was telling me this. I felt a little left out.

Oh, and a hint to all you women out there. Don't pester your husband because he "never" takes your picture, then proceed to hate every picture he takes of you.

What a Season it 'Tis

Whew. Manhandling a tree into a stand, then up the stairs, then being told you will indeed put the lights on it, all while four women critique your performace? I don't think so.

Tree goes in the stand, check. My younger sister helped with that though. To be fair my wife asked if I needed help and I told her I was okay. (This was before I actually started) Then move the furniture to make it fit. For once everyone agreed with me on where things should go. It was nice, especially since two of the women were my wife's mother and sister. Then manhandle the tree up the stairs and into the front door and house. Fine, get a little winded in the process? Check. So now I'm panting a bit after running downstairs and closing up the garage and such. Then I'm told that it's 100 lights to 1 foot of tree height, and that sincve I do such a good job, I'm doing it. Well, let's give that a check minus. 250 lights in and the tree is a bit more than half done (well vertically, as you go down you need more lights to get around the fat limbs.) but I'm all done.

Kinda makes me want to watch some Buffy to wind down.

Yutarei here is most distressed to find himself enjoying this rather remarkable show. He swore up and down for years that he wouldn't watch it because who could take a character named "Buffy" seriously. Despite valiantly explaining that this was rather the point, he refused. But a bet and some coercion have forced him to watch the full second season. His blog has some great commentaries on episodes. For the most part I agree with his comments and find his point of view quite refreshing as opposed to the very firm and established opinions of all the other people I talk about Buffy with. Check out his journey through season two starting from here and ending whenever it is he finishes the season.

My younger sister asked me to write another entry about "poop" but I'm pretty sure she was joking. I did feel that writing about shows I used to like but now think are crappy was close, so I decided to run with it.

Remember all those shows you thought were fantastic when you were 8-12 (or let's face it, for some of us, 21) . Don't watch them again. I had the chance a year or two ago to watch MacGyver on TVLand at night, and these days I catch about 5 minutes of it most mornings while getting ready for work. I loved MacGyver. He was the coolest, and all the situations in the episodes that he got out of using Science were sooo awesome.

Yeah, um apparently I was on drugs as a youngster. MacGyver is about a guy with a mullet who for some reason, a) feels the need to maintain an internal monologue about what he's doing, including stupid puns and wise cracks. It's like he's trying to convince himself how clever he is. b) Gets involved in the most outlandish international conspiracies, things that no government would EVER farm out to another agency, even one as cool as the "Pheonix Foundation". c) They seem to have invented a bunch of guns. I've never seen guns like they use on MacGyver. It's like they took a good gun, and made it look as weird and clunky as they could. I'm not firearms expert, but through various sources, I can now recognize most weapons used on TV and movies (okay, mostly lots and lots of rounds of Firearms) and I have never seen anything like what they use on MacGyver. d) All of his friends are insane with a side of crazy, especially the women. Not only that, but he never manages to actually hook up with any women, it's like he doesn't notice them except as cogs in a very important contraption he is inventing. e) And this is the big daddy of the problems. Oh my God is the acting bad. I mean first season of Babylon 5 bad. Enterprise bad. At least it isn't Starship Troopers bad. I'd never live that down.

Also, when I was young, I never noticed the things they intentionally left out of his solutions to keep people from using the show to learn how to do things like make gunpowder, but now it is so obvious that it bugs the crap out of me. Even though I know they did it on purpose.

My goodness, did I just drivel on for the last half million words up there? And I have the sinking feeling this post isn't even interesting. Oh well. Maybe I'll have some pictures to post after my trip to Harpers Ferry tomorrow. We shall see. Gnight all.

The Old Standby

Everyone has one. It's the topic you pontificate upon so often with your friends, that the once fresh ideas have become staid and boring. In fact, even you yourself no longer enjoy talking about it. This isn't that passion you have, that sport you played and get all nostalgic for every chance you get. Those will be with you forever. You'll recount that big race or game until your wife threatens to leave you over it, and your family can tell what kind of a week you've had based on how you recollect it.

No, the old standby is a topic which you wax philosophical on (or at least you believe you do) and attempt to sway the opinions of others on. For a time, mine was butt-tactility and it's affect on educational institutions. Mostly I really just liked using the phrase butt-tactility, which I coined during my high school years. But that grew tired, and no one was shocked by my use of the phrase anymore. Even the fact that I wrote an essay on my college application on this topic (and got in) is getting very old.

For me it's that all females of the species are MEH. Let me retype that M. E. H. or Manipulative, Evil, Headcases. There are unique ratios in all women, but they are all there. Men are Stupid, Stupid, Stupid (those are three separate categories of stupid there, don't mistake them for just gross stupidity), so it balances out. But that's my standby. And every single one of my friends has heard it. So let's avoid using the Old Standby and move on.

The difficulty here, is that I had a topic that struck me as I sat in front of my terminal typing away at some particularly scintillating fragment of code. I was something I'd wanted to sit down and write about for some time, but had never managed to get my pen to paper on. (I actually do use my pen on paper quite often. There is something about the fountain pen that makes you want to write longhand, even though I type quite quickly.) That topic has since left my mind. As I was leaving work, I realized I had lost it, and almost went and sat back down in my chair with the hope that I would remember it, but alas the persistent pressure to relieve myself pushed me out of the lab door and towards the restrooms and home.

Of course the cleaning ladies were in the restroom, and such was my need that I almost decided not to worry about that (the ultimate Splitting foul I suppose, though perhaps those rules are voided by the presence of a non-homophobia inducing someone...ie the opposite sex), but in the end the fact that my drive home is about seven minutes led me to just hold it until I got home.

The upshot of this was, I was left contemplating whether to go with the old standby, or the vacuous contents of my brain. As you can see, the void won out.

My wife and I finished watching the second disc of La Femme Nikita season 1 last night. With an episode entitled Treason. It was a solid episode, with none of the epileptic camera work of the episode before it, but it left me longing for a little bit of subtlety.

When I watched Nikita in the past, I saw it out of order and when I was watching USA at the right time. Like the afternoon Spiderman cartoons I saw in college, episodes here and there were in order, but by and large, things were a mess. Seasons overlapping and storylines completely intermingled. I never realized quite how thick they laid it on that Section would screw you twice while you screwed the bad guys if you could. That they would do their utmost to break you as a person almost as if that was their primary mission. If the option came up to either let you be happy and complete the mission, or make you miserable and complete the mission, they would choose to make you miserable every day of the week and a random power of two on both days of the weekend.

It seems to be laid on a little thick. If they were a bit more subtle about the Section, it would have made for more drama in my opinion. But of course this is the show's freshman season we are watching, so establishing the basis was important, and most shows are a bit hollow or over played in the first season. Especially the first 7 episodes as the characters/actors begin to gel. Also, Nikita is beginning to really understand how the game is played, though she still can't always deal with it. The acting has been pretty decent though so far, and you can immediately see there is chemistry between Nikita and Michael, even if you might not be quite sure where it came from. I think if they suffer from anything, it's a little TOO much showing and not quite enough telling, or at least not showing us ENOUGH to not feel jerked around a bit.

As we slowly get more discs from our Netflix cue (my wife has about 20 things in there before we get to the next disc) we'll see if they address these issues. I honestly cannot remember how good or bad the episodes were when I was watching them the first time. I just remember I loved the show and especially the style of it. I have a collection of about 10 pairs of cheap sunglasses because of a certain blonde with the code name Josephine

It's Been a Day

Ever swallow a pill and have it feel like it's stuck in your throat? I bet you think I'm going to try and relate my day to that pill with some kind of self-important craptacular metaphor. Nope, I currently have a pill in my throat that it feels like I didn't manage to swallow. It's not a particularly big pill either, but I keep tasting little bits of it, and I definitely feel it, so I'm thinking it's really there. Drinking water doesn't seem to be helping so much. Oh well, it's not painful, just annoying.

I'm supposed to be at Karate right now. But I decided that what with the gastro-intenstinal distress that caused me to take a pill, and get one stuck in my throat, my fellow martial artists would be much happier if I stayed home. Also, it's hard to kick and punch when you are having cramps.

See that last paragraph is something I wouldn't have considered writing before I got married. My wife has broken me of that taboo as has her family. Gastro-intestinal Distress (GID) or teeerible diarrhea as her family refers to it, used to be one of those topics I just didn't bring up. If people asked what was wrong with me, I'd wince and say "I'm just not feeling while". Now I tell them straight out "I'm having intestinal problems" and they say "eewww" and back away quickly. I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to be near me either.

Let me be clear. I don't generally get bad cases like some other people I am familiar with (not that I know that poor bastard). I am generally a once and I'm done kind of guy, but today I'm having low grade issues throughout the day. I just realized that taboo or not, there are some topics that just shouldn't be discussed in too much detail, because no one REALLY wants to hear them talked about.

I don't really have anything else on my mind right now though (funny how that works) so I'll just stop typing and say something else if I think of it later.

You Can Just Skim

It's not like I generally have interesting things to say, but something about the idea of random (and specifically targetted) people reading my random thoughts, has me signing up for a Blog. I'm sure the mania will fade away in a couple of days, but for now, you're stuck with me. Well not really, I'm not even telling anyone I have a blog. So I'm writing effectively for no one. Consider this an online Journal no one will read until I decide they should.

I'm sure there are a couple of really odd people that just search for new blogs that look interesting and read them. You people have way too much time though. So I find it highly unlikely you'll be looking up one titled like mine. Also, you should be doing something like playing Half-Life 2 or watching Firefly instead. Or you could go outside and take a walk in the crisp autumn air (I think I just started a bad novel there) with your SO or your dog. (If your dog is your SO, I hope that's just because you are good friends and don't have a girlfriend/boyfriend, if it's more than that, I really don't want to even thing about it, let alone know.) But really, you should stop reading this trash and move away from the computer.

Unless of course you are sitting in Panera looking trending with your steaming drink and pastry (it's hard to look trendy with soup or a salad...try it some time) and trying to pick up the opposite sex by looking intent at your laptop screen and appearing intelligent and focussed. If that's the case, then by all means look intent, while fingering the page down button so that you REALLY appear as if you are reading some important document for work instead oogling Friday's Penny Arcade.

I'll get this out there for everyone who doesn't know me right now. I'm taken (I know you are all crushed, especially you Jefferson) and not in the "we're dating" kind of way. It's the "What God has ordained, let no man put asunder" kind. That being said, I'm definitely open to all kinds of flattery from people who have never seen/met me. It's just not going anywhere. What is it about guys with blogs? If they are even decently well written, those guys get all these girls fawning on them. They could be the ugliest, most slobby guy out there, but if they can organize their thoughts and present them well, they become Don Juan. More power to them I suppose.

Oh, right. Fair warning, I am very verbose while not necessarily bothering to say a damn thing with all those words. You have been warned. The path may be interesting, but the destination looks a lot like your starting point.